County cocaine vending machine' sentenced to prison

WEST CHESTER – Phillip DiMatteo — described by one prosecutor as a vending machine for dispensing illegal drugs in Coatesville — was sentenced Wednesday to 15-to-30 years in prison.

“Drugs are a scourge on society today, and you are part of that problem,” Common Pleas Court Judge Phyllis Streitel told DiMatteo before handing down her sentence in his case, one of about 20 she has presided over involving the cocaine ring police say he operated in 2010 and 2011.

“This is a very grave offense, and destroys the fabric of everyday living,” Streitel told DiMatteo as members of his family looked on from the courtroom. “It’s a dangerous business. You knew it was wrong, you knew it was illegal. You knew it was dangerous, but yet you did it anyway. I will never understand why.”

Streitel’s sentence was half the 30 to 60 years in state prison the prosecution had asked for, and slightly less than what was given another man who the defense said was more of a drug kingpin than DiMatteo.

Advertisement

Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kelly, who prosecuted DiMatteo and the others in the drug ring dismantled by members of the Chester County High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area unit, declined comment on Streitel’s sentence after the two-hour long hearing, at which he said DiMatteo had risen to “the top of the heap” in drug dealing after starting a life in the business at 16.

“We have to respect the decision of the court,” Kelly said.

DiMatteo’s attorney, Evan Kelly of West Chester, who is not related to the prosecutor, said he hoped the sentence would give his client some hope that he could restart his life when he is released.

“I think it was a fair sentence, and I thank the judge for her consideration,” Evan Kelly said outside the courtroom. “He will have another shot at life in 15 to 30 years.”

That, essentially, was what DiMatteo asked Streitel for in his brief statement to the court before she imposed her sentence. “I’ve been in jail for 28 months,” he said, wearing navy prison clothing and sporting a tattoo on his neck that read, “Trust no one.”

“I’ve lost everything. I just pray that I get a second chance to turn my life around.”

DiMatteo, 25, was the center of a drug trafficking operation that he ran from a townhouse at the Regency Apartments in Coatesville, where he lived with his girlfriend and his three children. After police identified him as a drug dealer in 2010, authorities obtained court permission to wiretap his cell phone. On the wire, they picked up dozens and dozens of calls to and from DiMatteo’s associates from March 2010 to June 2010 in which they openly discussed buying and selling both powder cocaine, known as “sizzy,” and crack cocaine, known as “hizzy.”

At a trial for two of the men who bought cocaine from DiMatteo so that they could cut it down to size and sell it on the street, Stephen Kelly said DiMatteo was involved in selling drugs from the time he woke up in the morning until he went to bed at night.

“Mr. DiMatteo was like the vending machine for cocaine in Chester County, Coatesville, and the surrounding area,” Kelly had said during a trial involving two of his associates last month. “People went to his home to buy coke.”

In a sentencing memorandum filed with Streitel, Stephen Kelly asked her to sentence him to 30-to-60 years “for distributing tens of thousands of dosage units of cocaine per month to people in our community.” Anything less, he said, “would depreciate the severity and gravity of the defendant’s offenses.”

But Evan Kelly, arguing for a lesser sentence, told Streitel that his counterpart had offered a 20-to-40 year term as part of plea negotiations in the weeks leading up to DiMatteo’s guilty plea on 56 counts of delivery of a controlled substance, conspiracy, and running a corrupt organization.

The defense attorney also took issue with DiMatteo’s characterization as head of a drug ring. The real kingpin, he argued, was a Kennett Square man, Luis Rodriguez-Cruz, who had been arrested in March 2010 and sentenced to 18-to-36 years. DiMatteo, he said, was only a lieutenant in Rodriguez-Cruz’s organization.

The operation had been targeted in the fall of 2009, when the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area unit began its investigation. Involved in the case were the state police, Coatesville police, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Chester County Municipal Drug Task Force.

In court for the sentencing on Wednesday were state Trooper Joseph Fanning, Coatesville Detective Michael Raech, West Chester Officer Chris Craig, East Whiteland Detective Patricia Logic, and retired Chester County Det. Sgt. Joseph Daniels, who had overseen the investigation.

Daniels praised the work of the investigators involved in the case, saying it remained among his favorite assignments over his long career.

“We took several different law enforcement agencies and they put their organization differences behind them and made it work,” Daniels told a reporter afterwards. “I am really proud of the team work involved. I hope they continue to do the same good work.”

In some way, it was ironic that DiMatteo would be involved in such a high level drug dealing operation. His father had died a drug addict when DiMatteo was only 7, Streitel noted.

Donna Burgess, DiMatteo’s mother, speaking on his behalf, said she had spent many “sleepless night trying to keep him safe,” as a child. “But I had to let him go in order for him to become a man.

“This here is just a stumbling block for him,” she said of the prosecution. “When he comes out, he will be a far better man than what he has been. And we will do everything we can for him.”